How to Take Marketing Personalization to the Next Level

Post by Elsbeth RussellLast updated on January 15, 2020

01May2019

Every experienced marketer today understands the need to create a personalized message that resonates with their audience. Each person has slightly different interests, needs, and pain points. Catering to these differences with effective marketing personalization is the best way to stand out from the crowd and drive conversions.

That said, very few professionals today take full advantage of the marketing personalization opportunities out there. In fact, >78% of marketers admit that first name personalization to customize messages is the only kind of personalization they use.

That’s only the beginning of the possibilities with marketing personalization. Here’s how you can grow your personalization strategy for more profit:

1. Optimize Lead Capture for Personalization

But using your lead forms for segmentation requires balance. Put in too many mandatory fields and it could actually hurt your conversion rates. So make sure you only include the most relevant mandatory fields you need for personalization.

SharpSpring’s form-building features are perfect for this goal. They allow you to include optional fields to help new subscribers map on to your pre-set buyer personas for segmentation. They also can auto-fill form data for existing contacts, improving conversion rates in the process:

Another thing you can do to capture more information without affecting your conversion rate is displaying optional preferences. Give your audience the option to indicate their areas of interest when signing up. Do this on your sign up forms and include it at the bottom of every email you send. When people scroll down to the unsubscribe link in your emails, show a link to your email preference center.

This can help you reduce your unsubscribe rate, and provide more valuable information you can use for audience segmentation.

2. Use Deep Behavioral Insights

Audience behavior can tell you a lot about their interests, needs, and intent. Use these insights to create a personalized marketing message that’s relevant to their needs. The first step is tracking your audience’s on-site behavior. Marketing automation can help you track what pages your leads visit, how much time they spend on your site, what forms they fill out, what assets they download, etc.

But if you want to take behavioral insights to the next level, you should also use technology to track audience behavior across the web. Integrate your marketing automation technology with powerful CRM software that can drive even deeper insights from lead behavior. This is valuable for lead scoring and prioritizing opportunities so you can create a personalized sales message for your most valuable leads.

3. Create a Consistent Message Across Channels

Powerful personalization today is more than just using your lead’s first name in your email subject line. There are lots of ways to personalize your messages across marketing channels, such as email, your website, social, messaging, and advertising. Your leads are much more likely to convert after interacting with your business on several key touchpoints.

Create a consistent message when reaching out to your audience across channels. This includes personalization. For example, if you understand more about a lead’s interests based on their site behavior, make sure that’s reflected in your remarketing ads. There are lots of ways to integrate your personalization insights across marketing initiatives with the help of your CRM software.

4. Take Advantage of Dynamic Content

It’s not always necessary to create separate email segments to personalize your message. Choose a marketing automation platform allows you to create dynamic content. Then you can automatically make micro-changes to your message based on subscriber demographics and behavior.

For example, SharpSpring has a dynamic email builder so you can easily swap out images, phrases, or offers. Here’s an example of how a single email might look for men vs women:

5. Explore AI Solutions

The future of marketing is Artificial Intelligence (AI), and personalization is no exception. In 2019 and beyond, AI will be an important solution for scaling personalized marketing.

The truth is, there’s more actionable consumer data than marketing professionals are prepared to interpret or act upon. AI offers an opportunity to make full use of the consumer insights available to create more a relevant marketing message.

It’s possible to use machine learning algorithms to understand the intent behind audience behaviors. For example, machine learning technology can infer (without any instruction from you) that people who consume certain kinds of content are more likely to purchase a product.

Google Ads is a leader in both automation and AI technology. That’s why many businesses are already using AI to personalize their advertising targeting and message. But that’s really just the beginning. Explore all the available AI solutions for marketing to take your personalization efforts to the next level in 2019.

Always Look for New Personalization Opportunities

Right now most marketers use the same handful of personalization tactics as their competition. As a result, none really have an advantage over others. The key to winning the personalization game is driving better insights from consumer data to create a more relevant message for individual leads.

There is an opportunity though, as most marketers don’t have the interest or knowledge to utilize personalization to its full potential. Marketers who are always on the lookout for new ways to personalize are well positioned to beat the competition. So always keep an eye out for new insights, technologies, and strategies you can use to create the most relevant message for your audience.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more accessible for small businesses,…

AUTHOR

Elsbeth Russell

Elsbeth is the Marketing Content Manager at SharpSpring. Through the creation of lead-generating content, including white papers, blogs, infographics, and thought leadership articles, she leverages her nearly 15 years of experience in journalism, marketing and communications.